The Opinion Blog

On the Upswing at Last

Is the area poised for a comeback? Sunday’s editorial sure hopes so:

Spring is nearly here. Blooms are starting to peek out and pollen will soon fill the air. It’s an optimistic time of year as the world wakes from its wintry slumber, and this year we’ve got even more reason for optimism: building signs are popping up around town, and construction sites are buzzing once more.

The national jobless report released Friday morning held good news for all of us concerned about the economy, but particularly good news for our region, as many of our main industries were among the top job creators. Construction businesses added 48,000 jobs. Leisure and hospitality added 24,000. And retailers added 23,700. All three are major drivers of our local employment situation, and after years of attempting to claw our way out of the hole dug in the recession, it’s encouraging to see some daylight at last.

Why the Minimum Wage Debate Matters to Myrtle Beach

Friday’s second editorial explains why local folks should be paying attention to the ongoing debate over raising the minimum wage:

When the president unveiled his plan to raise the minimum wage from $7.25 to $9 an hour during his State of the Union address earlier this month, we sat up and paid attention. After all, the Myrtle Beach metro area, with its emphasis on tourism and hospitality industries, consistently ranks right at the bottom of the nation when it comes to hourly and annual earnings for local workers.

Without Great Choice for President, It's Obama

Sunday’s editorial offers the editorial board’s thoughts on the presidential election:

Few things about this presidential election have lent themselves to unambiguous, clear decisions, despite what the campaigns and their diehard supporters might like us to believe. Neither of the major candidates is a miraculous savior or unmitigated fiend. Both stand before U.S. voters with significant high and low points, and nobody has managed to leap to the fore as the obviously better choice.

For proof, you need look no further than the latest polling data. We give our fellow Americans credit for being fairly smart and invested in the future of this nation, and as such, if the decision on picking our next leader were an easy one, we wouldn’t be coming down to the wire with two candidates that are still neck and neck.

Hard Questions About College

Sunday’s editorial asks some tough questions about who’s going to college and why they aren’t succeeding:

Sandwiched inside the article The Sun News published last month when data on local, state and national SAT scores were announced was this sobering sentence: “The College Board considers 1,550 a benchmark for indicating college success.”

Those who read that far into the news story came upon the benchmark after learning that Horry County’s average SAT score was 1,484, Georgetown County’s average was 1,364, the state average was 1,431 and the national average was 1,498.

In other words, the average student SAT test taker, whether on the local, state or national level, is not considered likely to succeed in college. Those results come on top of similar ones from the ACT test, the other popular college entrance exam. A report this year by the organization behind that test found that only 25 percent of ACT-tested high school graduates nationwide were adequately prepared for college in all four subjects it covers: English, reading, math and science.

Local Incentives Need More Answers

Sunday’s editorial is the second of a two-part series on economic development incentives. While yesterday’s installment focused on their worth on the state and national level, today’s focuses more on local efforts:

Yesterday, we discussed how economic development incentives are most often a preposterously bad idea on a national and state level, giving public money to businesses that hold jobs for ransom, not because companies actually need such help.

University of Missouri political scientist Kenneth Thomas, who has spent most of his career studying incentives, put it this way in a recent interview: “We’ve just created a system where we pay them a lot of money to do something they would have done anyway.”

But that was on the national and state level. What about locally? There, the situation is a bit different. As long as we don’t particularly care about the costly effect such giveaways have on the state or the nation, incentives can actually make some difference on the city or county level. Those who study the practice have concluded that grants and tax breaks are at their most effective when companies are trying to decide between similar cities or metro areas. It’s in this situation that incentives can sway decisions at least a bit, even if it’s at the expense of other areas in the state or region.

Expand Horry's Reading Class

Everybody should be able to enjoy the wonderful world of reading, and some good folks in the area are working hard to make sure that more can, as Thursday’s editorial explains:

Some of us will be lucky enough to celebrate the American Library Association’s banned book week late this month, savoring the literature often unfairly demonized for one reason or another. We’ll reminisce about rafting down the river with Huck Finn, relive the Dresden bombing in “Slaughterhouse-Five” and be moved once more as Atticus Finch masterfully defends Tom Robinson in “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

But for a quarter or so of the folks in Horry County, books such as these are always banned. Not because the books aren’t available. But because 25 to 30 percent of the Horry County population remains functionally illiterate. They read at or below a fifth-grade level. As Pat Bush, director of the Horry County Literacy Council, put it, these unfortunate folks “can’t do basic things that we take for granted.”

On the Jobs Hunt, Prize Is Within Sight



Sunday’s editorial contains our hope that more than 1,000 sought-after jobs actually materialize for Horry County:

Sometimes it pays to be desperate.

Horry County has struggled the past few years with an unemployment rate that has consistently outpaced the state as a whole, in a state that already has one of the persistently highest rates in the nation. At 9.9 percent unemployment in May, Horry County saw more than 13,000 workers looking for jobs that have been far too elusive. In other words, 1 in 10 workers in the county have been unable to find work.

Local Hand Up for Local Business



Friday’s editorial urges Horry County to reconsider a local preference ordinance as part of its procurement policies:

North Myrtle Beach’s decision earlier this month to adopt a local vendor preference in its contracts will be a plus for residents of the city. Now it’s time for Horry County to follow suit.

The rules favoring local businesses are now in place in many areas across the Grand Strand. Georgetown County has had one for a number of years. Myrtle Beach and Conway have also instituted their own versions of such policies within the last couple of years.

Congratulations and Goodbye



We need to work harder to keep more of those who just graduated here in our area. At least Sunday’s editorial thinks so:

With the wrap up of high school graduations in Horry and Georgetown counties on Friday, thousands of newly minted diploma holders have been unleashed on the world. Many will go on to higher education, others will move into careers in the military that take them out of the area and some will move into work at local businesses. But few, if any, of the graduates will step straight into a high-paying career with a stable future straight out of high school.

Even those students who go on to college at Coastal Carolina University or Horry-Georgetown Technical College and graduate a few years later will have trouble turning that higher degree into a good job in our area. Some are admittedly available, but every year as these students graduate we watch many of them collect their diploma, walk off the stage and straight toward another county, state or nation. The area simply isn’t providing our graduates on either the high school or the college level with the opportunities they need to succeed and prosper on a wide scale. It’s not a new issue, but one that can’t be ignored.

Home Run, Step 1: Step Up to the Plate



Economic development efforts can be frustrating. But you can’t win if you don’t play, as Sunday’s editorial explains:

Don’t be too surprised if you’re at the House of Blues for the Edwin McCain concert Monday night and you see a few busloads of folks in “business casual attire” wandering in. The concert by McCain (as well as the wonderfully named Mark Bryan and the Occasional Milkshake) was chosen as the entertainment portion of the regional business conference in town for a few days. Hopefully, attendees are impressed.

Since it was announced in 2010, leaders have been touting the 2012 Southeastern U.S. - Canadian Provinces conference as a chance to show ourselves off.